The present invention relates to the displaying of measurement data, and more particularly to the attaching of measurement data to an area map to show the spatial location where each measurement was taken.
In the wireless telecommunications industry it is important for network operators to have a view of the network from the aspect of the subscriber. For example the Andrew® Invex3G® wireless coverage testing system plots on a geographic map of a region the quality of service in the form of a series of colored dots, the color representing the quality level at each measurement location as a user drives around the region. The measurement is taken using a conventional handset and accompanying processing hardware.
Likewise Summitek Instruments provides personal computer (PC) application software for spectrum monitoring and interference analysis (OASIS), which determines what radio frequency (RF) transmissions are present at a user's site, associates the emissions with a license and views the location of the identified emitter relative to the user's site on a geographical map. The geographical map also may indicate locations where measurements are taken. However, no measurements are associated with the identified emitter or measurement locations on the geographical map.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,906,643 describes how “path-enhanced” multimedia (PEM) data may be displayed, particularly on a “mapped-based view”. The view includes iconic representations corresponding to multimedia recorded during a vacationeer's trip overlaid on a map of the region visited. The vacationeer's path through the region is shown and icons along the path corresponding to video, sound and photo are shown at the points where they were recorded. The recorded media can then be played back by “clicking” on a particular icon. The icon only represents the type of data recorded at the indicated points, and does not “show” a portion of what was actually recorded.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,741,790 provides for recording of GPS (Global Positioning System) data on the same medium as images are recorded by a video recording device. The device may then be connected to a computer where a geographic map is presented with an index representing each location recorded on the recording medium. Then any location may be selected and the images recorded at that location are played back by the video recording device. Again the data at each location is not known until it is activated.
For field measurement applications a user would like to know the spatial location of each measurement, what type of measurement data is recorded at each location, what the data is and what the quality/strength of the signal represented by the measurement data is, all from a single display.